Using Kontakt in multiple tracks

[Roger W]

11 hours ago, David Baay said:

I'd have to see your project before and after deleting the instrument to understand what might have happened to cause the soloing issues. All that should have happened is that the track that was using that instrument would go silent, but it might depend on how instruments were assigned to outputs in Kontakt.

Thanks for your feedback.

Here is the initial set up, which works . . . .
5 Instruments in Kontakt 7.7
In CW, 5 Instrument tracks, with only the first one with an instance of Kontakt.
All inputs and outputs apparently correct. Everything is OK.

If I delete one instrument, everything still behaves normally.
(below Electric Sunburst Deluxe - instrument 3 - has been deleted)
As expected, CW track 3 no longer sounds during playback, since its instrument has been removed.

If I now add a new drum instrument in Kontakt, it shifts up to 3rd place automatically to take the place of the deleted instrument, and now show MIDI Ch 3, but the output says "Alicia Keys" which is the first instrument.
Track 3 in CW does not play anything, and the MIDI on track 3 does not play the Alicia Keys piano. All the other tracks play correctly.

In Kontakt, I reBatch the Outputs, and the output of the 3rd track now says correctly AR 70s Tight Kit.
However, the drums do not playback on CW track 3. But strangely, the Output meters in Kontakt and the CW meter in track 3 are both being triggered by the MIDI. And, the CW Master Output is not showing any activity on its meter from track 3.

It appears that Kontakt is transmitting the drum audio to CW, and CW is receiving it on right track, but the sound is not being sent internally to CW's Master Output.

I'd like to understand what's going on . . . but more importantly, I want to how to add a Kontakt instrument after deleting an instrument.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Roger W

[Roger W]

I think I've figure out how to delete and instrument in Kontakt, then add a new one . . . and make it work in CW.

The steps have to be done in this order:

1) Delete the undesired instrument in Kontakt.

2) Add another instrument. It will automatically appear in the place of the deleted instrument in the list.

3) Open Outputs, then re-Batch using the top choice of the three choices presented.

4) In CW, delete the track of the instrument previously deleted in K.

5) Rt click on any of the K tracks and choose Append Instrument.

6) If desired, move the newly created CW track to keep the instruments in the same visual order as in Kontakt.

If this is done out of order, there will be trouble.

 

 

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Roger W said:

Open Outputs, then re-Batch using the top choice of the three choices presented.

All you really need to do in this situation is manually reassign the output of the replaced instrument that defaulted to output 1 to output 3.

But the better approach would be to simply load a new instrument into the existing instument slot in the rack rather than deleting it in the first place. 

[msmcleod]

On 12/11/2023 at 3:43 AM, Roger W said:

One roadblock that's prevented me from understanding how to set up multiple instruments in Kontakt7 was that my Cakewalk GUI setup did not display the MIDI Ch control that normally appears at the bottom of the horizontal track strip controls. If I understand you correctly, this is the "forced MIDI channel" control that you were referring to. Somehow my Cakewalk was not configured to show that.

I've now enabled it:

Up to that point, the only MIDI Ch settings I knew about were at the bottom of the Track strip in the Inspector and the Console:

So in your previous post, you said that if the forced MIDI Ch setting is changed after setting Kontakt up with the "Per-Output Track functionality", then problems arise. In other words, this a bug?

Anyway, after receiving your and others' advice here, I was doing OK when I set up one instance of Kontakt with multiple instruments. But later, when I decided to delete one instrument in the list and replace it with another, strange things happened.

I started with 5 instruments, and all worked well. I could record and play back with no difficulty.
Then I deleted one of the instruments.
I re-Batched. All instruments would sound when playing back the song. However, when I attempted to Solo some of the tracks, some would sound in Solo, while others would go dead.
Having discovered the new-to-me MIDI ch control, I attempted to get all the inputs and outputs synced up so playback would work  correctly, but I failed.

Was this a case of me running into the problem (bug?) that you described that results from forcing a channel?
If that is the case, how does one get it to work after deleting an instrument from the list ?
Or is the only solution to completely start over and set up the instruments again?

 

Roger

There is no clever interaction between Kontakt (or any other multi-timbral VSTi) and Cakewalk.  No special notifications are sent to Cakewalk when you delete a library from Kontakt, so Cakewalk has no way of knowing you've pulled the rug from under it.

Re-running the batch-script in Kontakt after deleting a library after all the tracks have been created in Cakewalk is a bad idea.  All the MIDI / audio port mapping is going to change.

If you do need to delete a library in Kontakt (unless it's the last one)
-   don't run the batch script
-   be prepared to manually set the MIDI / Audio channel outputs in both Cakewalk and Kontakt.

Note - it's fine to delete a library, then add a new one to the end and continue to use "Append Instrument Track" as long as the MIDI Channel / Audio Port continues to ascend.  Just make sure you don't change the MIDI channels / Audio ports for any existing libraries.

If deleting libraries is a common part of your workflow, consider using simple instrument tracks and having separate instances of Kontakt for each track.  For Kontakt at least, the difference in CPU/Memory usage is minimal.

[JnTuneTech]

10 hours ago, msmcleod said:

If deleting libraries is a common part of your workflow, consider using simple instrument tracks and having separate instances of Kontakt for each track.  For Kontakt at least, the difference in CPU/Memory usage is minimal.

I subscribe to the method of creating one instrument track for each Kontakt output/pair, and (at least) one basic MIDI track to "feed" each instrument. That gives the option of using/assigning/re-assigning MIDI tracks to any individual Kontakt instrument by channel assignment pairing, and in the case where an instrument may have several MIDI inputs in of itself, helps figure things out. In most cases, only one instance of Kontakt is necessary for that as well.

You can definitely use multiple Kontakt instances, but by design, the use of its multiple outputs seems to work best for me - resource and patching-wise, by using the Kontakt app for creating/assigning outputs, and using Cakewalk track routing & naming to set up the mix. -The simple instrument setup can be great for fast instancing, but you may get more long-term mileage out of learning to specifically route MIDI & audio tracks - IMHO.

[Roger W]

I had assumed that having 1 instance of Kontakt with several instruments would be easier on RAM and CPU usage, so I was eager to learn how to use this method.

But after reading what msmcleod said,  and several different forum threads on this issue from a variety of sources, it appears that is not the case.
The general consensus seems to be that running a single instance of Kontakt with many instruments, versus running one instance of Kontakt for each instrument, there is no significant difference in RAM or CPU usage . . . .

 

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Roger W

[OutrageProductions]

1 hour ago, Roger W said:

... that running a single instance of Kontakt with many instruments, versus running one instance of Kontakt for each instrument, there is no significant difference in RAM or CPU usage . . . .

Very little of the Kontakt code is duplicated in RAM for multiple instances, so it is not the memory hog... but the sample libraries are.

I run projects daily that contain 60 to 100 instances of Kontakt wrapped in Komplete Kontrol with no issues at all.